RE: Is God always "just"?
May 6, 2011 at 6:29 am
(This post was last modified: May 6, 2011 at 6:55 am by Interzone.)
(May 6, 2011 at 5:00 am)fr0d0 Wrote:(May 6, 2011 at 3:48 am)Cinjin Cain Wrote: Some of you christians have some STRANGE ideas of what you think being just is.God is entirely just. What you object to is the mismatch with your own morals. Compared to moral perfection that's understandable.
Trying to ground justice in God seems to me a very tenuous proposition. Let me explain.
If God is the arbiter of justice, then it follows that justice is entirely arbitrary. The only standard for justice, in this definition, is God's whim. So if God were to say that murder is just, then you must accept murder as being just.
On the other hand, if justice is objective and not arbitrary, then it must be separate from God. That is, the variables of justice are concrete, and immune to even God's will. Of course, this means that God is not omnipotent and "all powerful" as the bible claims. For example, if murder is unjust, then it is because murder is unjust in and of itself, and NOT because God says it's unjust.
The dilemma is obvious. If you accept the first definition, then you must accept that God is a moral relativist. What is good and bad is determined by God, and not by some absolute truth. However, if you believe there is an absolute truth, then even God cannot change what is true or not (hence the term, absolute), meaning that God is not omnipotent.
The first definition makes biblical sense. It would explain why God could order the genocide of Amalakites and Midianites, yet at the same time command his people not to murder/kill in the Ten Commandments. It makes God a hypocrite, but since only God can determine what is just, we could not question him. It also means that if God were tell us to murder and rape our neighbors, it would be perfectly just for us to do so.
(May 6, 2011 at 4:33 am)Godschild Wrote: Let's get something straight here GOD'S creation was perfect, man (Adam) allowed sin to come into God's perfect creation and corrupt it, man is responsible for the imperfection in this world not God.
